Please help a newbie to both GTD and Toodledo

I'm fairly new to GTD (about a month), and have been looking for a way to implement it with my Mac, iPhone, and iPad. I started trying to do it with Evernote, which is a great program, but just not quite right for GTD in my opinion. So I'm checking out Toodledo. I've already subscribed to the premium account, and have checked out Proximo's thread and videos.

I'm having trouble configuring Toodledo for what I want.

I've already set up my folder similar to Proximo. I've added my contexts (home, computer, phone, office, errands). What I would like to do is set up another category separate from contexts: work, or personal. I would also like to classify some of my projects to "Key and Target Account", and to sub classify the "Key and Target Account" by the company I am working with. (As to why: I work as a distributor: I sell for several different companies. My employer has a "Key and Target Account" program, in which we track what we have done at certain customers, and for certain principals. I would like to be able to pull up my Key and Target Accounts for each company I sell for.)

Also, I would like to archive my completed projects and actions into Evernote. Does anyone do this, and, if so, how?

I’ve been using GTD for a while now, although I’m only really a middle belt. I found Toodledo sometime ago and although I often look at other solutions that make big claims about GTD, I stick with my system, which is based around Outlook at work, Wed at home and iphone everywhere.

When I setup, I had decisions to make about how to use folders, tags and contexts in Toodledo to fit with my stuff. It sounds like you are having similar debate at the moment. I thought I’d share this with you in case this helps.

1. I use contexts for contexts. Sounds obvious, but was a decision to be made. I have the usual GTD set (@AGENDA, @CALL etc), but am not afraid to create them and delete them as my stuff happens. To compensate for the lack of hierarchy in context, I have resorted to using “-“ in certain cases. For example, I have @OUT-Town, @OUT-Staples etc.

2. I use folders to separate my stuff at a very high-level. I don’t have many, but wanted to keep my WORK and HOME different (this aids with syncing my Work stuff from Outlook to Toodledo without having my Home stuff synced back to Outlook). If I need my HOME stuff at work I can use the WWW or iphone interface. I also have a few other folders – SHOPPING (which essentially is a shared folder with my better half), Reference for notes etc.

3. I use tags for logical stuff. This is where I think your “Key and Target Account” reference may fit. Tags are very fluid in my world, but can be anything. Normally I use this for special projects or certain events for which I want to be able to group and filter my tasks. My current fav is "Weekend" for those things that I may want to get around to this weekend.

4. I have avoided using length, as this tended to make me try to over organise my tasks. To be honest, I know what is quick and what isn’t – I leave this to the point of doing. You could tag them or have a quick stuff folder as alternatives to length if needed.

5. One running sore for me is priorities. GTD doesn’t really use these, but I still hang on to them a little – especially at work (bad GTD I know, but hey it's my life right?). For simplicity of use and to aid sync to outlook, I have 3 contexts relating to work @WORK-1-MUST, @WORK-2-SHOULD,@WORK-3-ROUTINE which allows me to assign a sort of priority to my things. I use this as a vague guide, not an absolute. I don’t feel guilty about doing these out of order or not at all if this is appropriate when I’m doing. The stuff I really must get done today are starred during a start of day review.

6. I manage my project list elsewhere in an outliner as this doesn’t fit well in here. Using Folders for projects doesn't work for me - I have too many projects and needed a few levels of hierarchy for these to make sense. Not ideal – anybody got anything better?

7. It is a little too easy to combine reference materials and tasks in Toodledo . Try to keep these separate if you can.

I've been just now reading the GTD book and have started basic the collection phase using ToodleDo. So far so good. I have been thinkning about Projects and how to manage those in ToodleDO using subtasks.

At this point we only have on level of subtasks. So what I have started doing is just creating my Top Level project with a + and then a short name. ex.
+EXUPG Exchange Server Upgrade

Then when I add a sub task I will label it with a - and the short name and a 3 or 4 digit number for sorting.

So I may label the first subtask
-EXUPG 0010 install server

and then

-EXUPG 0020 test server

etc.

I seperate the initial number spread to allow me to enter tasks in between.

I could also renumber items as needed to move them around.

Still working on things but thought that might spark some interest.

For me it is far easier to do a little manual coding as above then to try to use some other Project Management.

Toodledo does allow manual sorting of subtasks so you don't have to pre-pend your task name with numbers if you don't want to. You need to turn this on in your account settings.

That's true and is fine for the web toodledoo but it doesn't carry over to the iPhone app (at least I don't think it does). I'm thinking of using Dave's idea for manually sorting tasks so they appear correctly on the iPhone - anyone got any better suggestions?